Stop Moving the Goalpost — Feel Successful & Balanced in Q4

Are you successful on paper but still feel like it’s never enough? 
You’re constantly chasing the next goal, but instead of satisfaction, you feel stress, burnout, and guilt.

In this episode, Megan Devito shares why high-achieving women keep moving the goalpost and how to finally feel successful, calm, and fulfilled without losing your motivation or momentum.

What you’ll learn:
• Why your brain resists feeling successful 
• How moving the goalpost triggers anxiety and burnout 
• A simple mindset shift to find calm and clarity 
• How to celebrate progress while staying focused 
• What it takes to find balance and peace in Q4 

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You don’t have to hustle harder to feel enough. Let’s rewrite what success feels like in your body and your business. 

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Transcript

Hey, you're successful at work. I mean, you're exhausted, but you're successful at work. You're still able to be there for your friends or your kids or your family. you go to the sports, you go to the college visitations, you go to the family dinners, but you're kind of unfocused and you're thinking about what comes next or what you should probably be doing instead of actually enjoying the things that you work so hard for.

Or maybe you're physically there but mentally checked out all the time. You're checking all those boxes off and you're successful, but you don't feel successful or at least not successful enough. So you just keep overworking, overthinking, feeling guilty, keeping that feeling of success and confidence completely smothered by stress and anxiety. Yeah, that's how a lot of my clients feel. And if that sounds like you, we're gonna talk about that today.

I'm Megan Devito. I am a certified coach and I help successful, motivated women who oftentimes don't recognize their success. I help them figure out how to break free from burnout and anxiety so that they can experience the calm and the confidence at work, set boundaries that actually stick and finally have the energy and the peace of mind to be fully present for the people and the moments that matter most to them. And what I know from looking back over my life and from working with some really incredible successful women is that often the most successful people are the least likely to be able to recognize and enjoy their success, which really stinks because they've been working so hard and they've done such amazing things, but they just keep moving the bar on themselves. They're used to hustling. They're used to working towards their goals, but they never actually reach their goals because they move the finish line. And I want you to think about this for a minute.

What if you're running a race, a marathon, which don't ever sign me up to run anything, but let's say that you're running a marathon and you get almost to the finish line and somebody moves at another five miles down the road. First of all, I would exit stage right and not run anymore, but you just keep running, right? And we see this so often with people who are successful that they get so close to their goal and they're like, but I really, where I really need to be is five more steps or five more miles down the road.

Let's stop that right now because that is a surefire way to feel burned out, overwhelmed, stressed and anxious. None of the things that I want you to feel and the exact things that I help my clients stop feeling. In this episode, I want to talk with you about how appreciating the work that you've done, recognizing your success along the way and allowing yourself to achieve a goal with intention and with all of those really great emotions before you fly through to the next milestone will actually help you love not just the success or the goal, but the journey along the way. Plus, to really be present with the people and the life that you've been trying to create, which is really the ultimate goal on why we work so hard anyway, isn't it? 

Let's talk about what you're doing right now that's causing this to happen. You are spreading yourself really thin. You're always figuring out what you're doing wrong and trying to fix it all the time by working harder by overthinking, by over committing and breaking boundaries. And you're squeezing in little chunks of time for your family and friends, then regretting that you're not working, even when you know that the success that you want is often more about being able to be present and with your family. Like you're working so hard to be there and once you get there, your mind's like, but I have this project, but I have this meeting, but I have this goal, I have this thing that's happening.

It's a weird kind of self-sabotage where you downplay your success and your goals, even though you're already achieving them. And I think it's crazy that this episode popped into my head right now because just probably three or four weeks ago, I think now, I did an entirely back-end episode on this, on people who I work with who are like, ugh, don't sign me up for goals. I don't wanna feel embarrassed. I don't wanna feel overwhelmed. And I don't wanna fail. So there's two sides to this.

Some people are terrified of setting goals because they're afraid they'll never reach them and they'll be embarrassed or they'll fail. And on the other side, we have people who just keep moving the bars so that they are always failing or always sabotaging. In both cases, what we need to do is we have to step back and take an honest look at where you wanna be. If you are not willing to look at what's going on in your life, where you are and where you wanna be, you're gonna stay doing the same things over and over again, the exact things that are going to lead you to burnout and frustration. 

So I wanna start with getting an idea of what the you who has the goal looks like. What do they feel like? Not necessarily how did they do it, but what do they feel like inside? What are the emotions? Do they feel calm? Do they feel frantic? Do they feel proud? Do they feel embarrassed? Do they feel successful? Do they feel motivated? Do they feel clear?

Get really familiar with that version of yourself because that version of you is just down the road somewhere waiting for you to catch up. And that doesn't mean pushing further and faster and ignoring the goals and the success along the way. What does that version of you do during the day? What do they do when they wake up? I'm like, keep swinging my coffee back and forth here. Do they get up and grab coffee? Do they get up and network? Do they get up and work out? Do they journal? Do they lay in bed and hit snooze five times? What did they do?

Who do they hang out with? Do they hang out with people at work? Do they hang out with their family, with their friends, all of the above?

How does this person already exist or why don't they exist? What do you think's going on there? These are really great journal prompts if that's something that you're into. They're also great for you just to think about when you're in the shower or driving down the road or wherever it is where you have time in your day to be alone with your thoughts. But get really familiar with that version of yourself that has achieved the goal that you want to achieve. When I'm doing a consultation call or a Boundaries and Balance audit with someone,

This is when I'm talking with really successful people or ambitious men and women who are going after their goals. And I always think it's such a funny, like a funny back and forth here where I literally coach successful people on how to feel successful or how to feel confident, which seems so backwards, doesn't it? I think from the outside, I get this really great viewpoint of what success looks like. And I'm like, my gosh, like I can't believe this is your job. And they're like, yeah, it's fine. I mean, what I really want to do.

Successful is so in our own heads, but I'm going to help you on this audit or on a consultation call to really find the places that you're already successful and to find the thoughts and the habits that are keeping you stuck and that keep you from being able to appreciate your success, to feel confident, to feel calm, and to be able to have the life that you want. And so we'll find areas where maybe your ideal self needs more time with friends to connect about something other than.

Maybe you're missing creativity or you haven't taken time to attend church or mosque or temple or to meditate recently because you're completely over committed and exhausted. I do not have time to take care of my spiritual self. That's a really important part of yourself. Or maybe you don't even know what you want and you're working hard and frantically to try to figure out what you want. Let's hit the brakes. Let's figure that out. Let's get really clear on where you are and where you want to be.

Because what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna help you know exactly where to start in just that audit or on a consultation call. Whether it's working with me as your coach, working with someone else as your coach, or just going it alone. What has to happen is you have to realize that success is not coming from hard work and perseverance alone. Absolutely, 100 % work hard, persevere but also give yourself credit and know exactly what you're working toward so that you can celebrate along the way. 

This is such an important part of enjoying the success because when you've achieved the goal that you've been working for, that you set with intention, you have to be able to pause and reflect before you can go on to the next thing. And if what you want is to sit there for five years and say, my gosh.

I cannot believe that I finally made this happen. Do it. That's what you were working toward. You deserve to be able to pause and to be able to say, even if I decide to not go any further in this, I am successful right now. And if you decide that there's something more for you, before you jump into that with both feet, let's get clear about where we're going next. Let's decide what that looks like. Let's create all of those great emotions and then level up. Let's start that process by refocusing, deciding what you want, why you want it, and bring all of those things together so that you've got the motivation and you've got the resilience and the grit to go for it. 

As a coach, this is absolutely my favorite part of my job. I get to find all of those sneaky, often untrue thoughts or limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck and give you the support that you need to help you create the systems that work for you, not for somebody else, to set boundaries, to lower the anxiety so you can think clearly, and to be accountable for yourself and to your goals. It's so much fun. It is so much fun. 

And coaching makes all of that so much easier because you don't know what you don't know and you can't see what's going on in here. And that's really why we need that back in support and the accountability to help you get there easier with less mind drama. So if this episode helped you refocus, made you curious about where you're headed, I hope that you'll share it with a friend and follow along. I really love making these episodes for you and hearing from you. So if I don't talk to you in the comments or on a call this week, I will be back again next week. Take care.